My Friends: A Novel

As a young boy in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story on the radio about a man being eaten alive by a cat. Obsessed by the story and its enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa, Khaled eventually travels to the University of Edinburgh to pursue a life of the mind, leaving behind the world he knew in Libya. Thrust into an open society vastly different from home, Khaled attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London that turns tragic. Injured and unable to return to Libya, he cannot safely tell his parents what happened on their tapped phone lines without exposing them to danger. When Khaled encounters Hosam Zowa by chance in a hotel, he enters the deepest friendship of his life. This friendship sustains him but also forces him to confront tensions between revolution and safety, family and exile, and how to define himself against those closest to him as the Arab Spring erupts. The novel explores how time tests and strains the bonds between friends and family.